In these ultra-PC days, the language you use can get you into trouble; even an innocuous-sounding ‘pleb’ or ‘taff’, used in circumstances perceived as wrong. It isn’t surprising, then, that profanity has been put under the spotlight by Jonathan Miller; but his claim that profanity has lost its impact through unthinking over-use is surely redundant. Swearing is as old as the Ten Commandments, and many people have habitually used bad language when a mental search for a more apt word might prove too strenuous. The Times claims that ‘there is an art to swearing…that requires using profanity sparingly and imaginatively, according to circumstances, rather than habitually’, and states, tongue in cheek, that ‘Effective outrage requires succinctness, passion and pith. It should be left to the true pith artist.’
Back in the 1920s, D H Lawrence made a satirical point when he wrote about an acquaintance of his, an army officer who had returned from service abroad to find his wife sleeping with another man, exclaiming: ‘Five f**king years in f**king Africa, and what do I f**king well find? My wife, engaged in illicit cohabitation…’ Lawrence was no prude, and merely wanted to reclaim the f-word for its descriptive function; but he was fighting a lost battle. Slightly more effective were the introduction of euphemisms: Norman Mailer used ‘fug’, and many people employ ‘frig’ or the Irish ‘feck’. Not to mention ‘eff’. One fellow ingeniously suggested numbering a list of obscene words and using the numbers instead – ‘he called me a thirteen twenty-five, so I told him to six off’ – but it’s unlikely to catch on.
However, there is a difference between obscenity and blasphemy. It’s astonishing that people who cringe at ‘f**k’ and even shy away from ‘arse’ will happily take the name of the Lord in vain. I have been told that saying ‘f**k’ or ‘s**t’ is more offensive to people than exclaiming ‘Christ’ or ‘Jesus’ in disgust or fury. Not to me, it isn’t. Some Christians claim that swearing this way is good ‘because it keeps the holy names in circulation’, but I’m not convinced; either pray, or don’t use them at all.
Historically, several swear words had blasphemous connotations that are now forgotten: ‘cor blimey’ was once ‘God blind me’, and ‘bloody’ is a corruption of ‘by Our Lady’ (‘bleeding’ being a linguistically irrelevant riff). Thankfully, some have now been discarded, such as ‘Zounds’ (‘God’s wounds’), and ‘s’blood’ (ditto blood). And William the Conqueror’s second favourite swear, ‘Bowels of Christ’, which combined both obscenity and blasphemy, hasn’t been in use since the Middle Ages. (His favourite, ‘Splendour of God’, isn’t as bad).
There are several saints for mention today: St Petroc, tamer of wolves, after whom Padstow is named (Petroc, not the wolves), and St Breaca, a fellow Cornish saint, whose church in Cornwall (St Breage) still has mediaeval frescoes. There’s also St Saturnina, who was born of a noble family in Germany but fled to France when told she must marry and had her head cut off by her spurned Saxon suitor. She carried her head to a stone outside the church, where a tree was planted, and is still venerated despite her relics having been taken back to Germany. Or there’s St Optatus of Milevis, a convert from paganism who became a Bishop in North Africa.